Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

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in obtaining the privilege of conducting their own arrays.

Conversely,

though, it is a measure of the respect in which Hexhamshire’s ‘royal rights’

were held by the crown and by local society that they were not substantially

challenged in the fourteenth century. Royal commissioners of array and

wardens of the Marches were only rarely given speci c authority within

the liberty, as in 1326 and 1359, and it was probably unusual for the liberty

simply to be included within the county of Northumberland.

It is true that

Robert II Ogle was appointed by the crown in 1335 to array the liberty, but

his commission was rapidly con rmed by Archbishop Melton (1317–40);

and generally royal commissions of array were directed to the archbishop

or the liberty’s steward/baili for execution.

 us when Archbishop

Corbridge (1300–4) was asked in 1303 to send forces to support John

Segrave, he ordered the baili to levy the men of the liberty.

In 1309,

1311 and 1314 requests went to Archbishop Green eld (1306–15); in 1327

Archbishop Melton ordered the baili to array the liberty’s men in response

to a royal writ; and similar royal mandates were received and executed in

1355 and 1369.

Commissions of array generally acknowledged that the

archbishop’s writ should run within the liberty; the archbishops, in turn,

were prompt in responding to royal requests. Crown and liberty- holder

CPR 1364–7, p. 437; M. Prestwich, ‘“Tam infra libertates quam extra”: liberties and mili-

tary recruitment’, in M. Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and Identities in the Medieval British Isles

(Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 111–19.

Parl. Writs, II, ii, p. 744; Rot. Scot., i, p. 839. In 1343, when Hexhamshire came under

the supervision of royal commissioners to punish truce- breakers, it was assumed that

they would not actually enter the liberty; similarly, in 1362, the warden- conservators

were authorised to enter Hexhamshire and other liberties only if the bailiffs defaulted in

their duties (Rot. Scot., i, pp. 644, 862). In 1346 the authority of the wardens specifically

extended into the liberties of Durham, Norhamshire, Tynedale and Hexhamshire; but the

archbishop of York was one of the wardens (ibid., p. 669). And when Anthony Lucy was

created ‘captain’ of Hexhamshire on 19 December 1315, the see of York was vacant and

the liberty in royal hands (ibid., p. 152).

Ibid., p. 389; Reg. Melton, f. 547r.

‘Steward’ and ‘bailiff’ were generally used interchangeably to denote the liberty’s chief

official. Some distinction between the two offices is suggested by a dispute of 1398, when

John Clavering had been appointed bailiff, but William IV Swinburne wrongly occupied

the office of steward, which ‘by right’ pertained to the office of bailiff (NCS, ZSW/1/96).

Again, in the enrolment of Robert II Ogle’s appointment as steward in 1351, ‘and bailiff’

was interlined after ‘steward’ (Reg. Zouche, f. 297v). For the most part, however, contem-

poraries used both ‘steward’ and ‘bailiff’ to describe the same men, and this chapter follows

their example.

Hexham Priory, i, Preface, pp. lxxxvii–viii; Parl. Writs, I, pp. 369–70; Prestwich, ‘“Tam

infra libertates quam extra”’, p. 114. For a commission of array issued by Archbishop

Romayne in 1295, see Reg. Romeyn, ii, no. 1334.

Parl. Writs., II, ii, pp. 384–6, 388, 413; Rot. Scot., i, pp. 74, 77, 101, 777–8; Memorials of

the Church of . . . Ripon, ed. J. T. Fowler (SS, 1882–1908), ii, pp. 96–7; Hexham Priory, i,

Preface, pp. xcvii–ix.

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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE

177

shared the objectives of national security, and both saw the advantages of

respecting each other’s claims.

Royal taxation of the liberty tells a more complicated story, but again one

that con rms the strength of Hexhamshire’s ‘immunities’.

For most of the

thirteenth century there is no evidence that the liberty contributed to aids

or subsidies, and it is a surprise that it seems to have been assessed for the

  eenth of 1275, albeit – with royal agreement – under the supervision of

the liberty baili rather than of crown o cers.

A similar arrangement was

probably followed for the eleventh and seventh of 1295 and the twel h and

eighth of 1296, but there was considerable di culty in obtaining the sums

assessed. Arrears were still owed to the crown in 1299, and it was probably

at this time that a list of the liberty’s debtors for those subsidies was pro-

duced.

Collection of the arrears was deputed to the liberty baili , but in

1309 the baili was still being ordered to levy them.

For the subsidies of

1306 and 1307 collectors were appointed directly by the crown, but again

with little success: in 1316 the exchequer was still asking for details of the

1306 assessment.

 e di culty was probably the same as it was to be in

1336, when the royal collectors of the   eenth and tenth granted in March

claimed that they had not been able to enter the liberty ‘because the king’s

writ does not run there’.

A renewed attempt by royal commissioners to come into the liberty and

‘assess the men there afresh’ prompted Archbishop Melton to have the

privilege of appointing his own assessors con rmed in 1339.

Despite this

grant, however, Melton seems to have been unwilling to assess the liberty

on the crown’s behalf. As the king’s taxers for Northumberland explained

to the exchequer early in 1341, when called to account for the subsidies of

1336 (a   eenth and tenth) and 1337–9 (a triennial   eenth and tenth), the

owners of several liberties (Durham between Tyne and Tees, Hexhamshire

and Tynedale) had not allowed their men to appear before the taxers,

or been prepared to carry out the taxation themselves.  is was on the

For earlier work, see in particular Willard, Parliamentary Taxes, pp. 29–32.

This, at least, seems to be the import of CPR 1272–81, p. 133, although the 1275 subsidy is

not explicitly mentioned.

E 179/242/79 (printed, with inaccuracies, in NCH, iii, pp. 31–4); 179/276/76A, m. 4.

The former document is regularly but incorrectly described as an assessment for the

liberty.

Reg. Greenfield, v, no. 2668.

CPR 1301–7, p. 491; 1307–13, p. 24; Willard, Parliamentary Taxes, p. 30.

E 179/158/7, mm. 2d, 7d. For subsequent years, see E 179/158/9–11, after which

Hexhamshire, Durham and Tynedale cease to be routinely mentioned in the

Northumberland assessment rolls; cf. the enrolled accounts in E 359/14, mm. 23d–47,

passim.

CCR 1339–41, p. 148.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

178

grounds that writs containing the clause ‘tam infra libertates quam extra’

did not extend to ‘royal liberties’ (libertates que vocantur regales) where the

king’s writ did not run.

 e exchequer’s response to these claims focused on earlier precedent.

 e barons were able to ascertain that Hexhamshire had contributed to

the subsidies of 1295 and 1296, and since no precedent for exemption

could be found it was decided that the liberty’s inhabitants should be

assessed. Again, though, this decision does not seem to have been e ec-

tual; and the liberty also seems to have escaped assessment for the ninth of

1340–1.

In the 1350s the crown was unable to  nd any evidence that the

Northumbrian ‘royal liberties’ had contributed to any subsidies since the

beginning of Edward III’s reign, and the question of Hexhamshire’s immu-

nity arose again. Early in 1351 the treasurer and barons of the exchequer

were ordered to search for precedents, and in February 1352 they were

instructed to levy sums owed since 1327 unless any reason for exonera-

tion were discovered.

Again, the precedents of 1295–6 were found, and

in the absence of later evidence it was decided to summon the liberty’s

inhabitants to show what warrant they had for exemption.  e men of

Hexhamshire were duly summoned by the sheri of Northumberland, but

failed to appear, and a commission to assess the arrears was issued in May

1352.  e commissioners, however, failed to act; and a number of respites

postponed the case until late in 1356.

In the interim Hexhamshire was

exempted in 1355 from the ‘forced loan’ of 1347 on the grounds that it had

not previously paid   eenths or tenths.

 en in 1356 the  rst of a series of

royal writs was issued, further postponing the case, in the  rst instance until

the next Parliament.

 e postponements were extended until a er Easter

1358, when Archbishop  oresby explained that representatives from his

liberty had not been able to appear in 1352 because of the threat of Scottish

invasion, and because of the death of Archbishop Zouche (1342–52).  e

liberty was again required to justify its immunity; but in 1359, a er several

further postponements,  oresby was able to obtain an exemption from all

subsidies for the inhabitants of the liberty during his lifetime.

 is represented a signi cant development of the liberty’s privileges

E 159/117, m. 162.

Hexhamshire does not appear on the only surviving assessment (E 179/158/14). Nor does

the liberty occur in later lists of debts owed for the ninth, such as E 372/190, rot. 35–35d;

372/196, rot. 25, m. 1.

C 260/62/4.

E 159/128, recorda, Hilary term, mm. 2–2d, 3d.

CFR, vi, p. 431.

CCR 1354–60, pp. 332, 410, 423.

Ibid., pp. 457, 524; CPR 1358–61, p. 246.

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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE

179

from the earlier position that the archbishop’s o cers should assess and

collect national taxation. Hexhamshire had established a wider immu-

nity, con rming its place alongside Durham and Tynedale.

Admittedly

the grant to  oresby can be seen as a reward for his loyalty to Edward

III, whom he had served as chancellor until November 1356; and it also

occurred in the sunny political and  nancial climate of the late 1350s.  e

liberty was unable to avoid contributing to the parish subsidy of 1371,

which was levied throughout England, even from areas traditionally enjoy-

ing exemption, at a time when the crown was less generous following

renewed war with France. Nevertheless in 1371 the liberty’s inhabitants

retained some immunity, since the assessed sum was not collected directly

from them by the crown, but paid by  oresby himself.

And the subsidy

of 1371, furthermore, was exceptional. In 1359 Edward III had reserved the

right to tax the liberty with the rest of Northumberland a er  oresby’s

death; but the accession of Alexander Neville in 1373–4 did not, in fact,

bring an end to the privilege.  e liberty escaped the poll tax of 1377, and

it was apparently not until the subsidy of 1436 (which was demanded even

from Durham and Cheshire) that the archbishop of York was again asked

to levy a royal tax in Hexhamshire.

In essence, therefore, Hexhamshire remained throughout the fourteenth

century, and indeed later, a ‘royal liberty’ where the king’s writ did not run.

 is is not to say that there was no royal in uence on or control over the

liberty, or that it remained an entirely self- contained institutional struc-

ture. Most fundamentally, the archbishop of York was essentially a royal

appointee; while, at a more everyday administrative level, royal inquisi-

tions occasionally dealt with estates within the liberty, and crown grants

extended therein. Robert II Ogle’s properties at Aydon Shields and Rowley

Head were included in a royal grant of free warren, and were surveyed

a er his death, along with his other possessions in Northumberland, in an

inquisition taken at Newcastle in 1362.

 e liberty’s inhabitants occasion-

ally sought royal con rmation or enrolment of their property transactions;

the archbishops themselves sometimes assumed that their licences for

alienation in mortmain required royal con rmation.

And,  nally, some

On Tynedale, see below, Chapter 7, especially p. 314.

CCR 1369–74, p. 256; W. M. Ormrod, ‘An experiment in taxation: the English parish

subsidy of 1371’, Speculum, 63 (1988), pp. 76–9.

The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, ed. C. C. Fenwick (Oxford, 1998–2005), ii,

pp. 256–71; iii, pp. 545–50; CFR, xvi, p. 262. No detailed assessments survive from

Northumberland for the taxes of 1379 and 1381.

CChR, v, p. 4; CIPM, xi, no. 401.

CCR 1313–18, p. 560 (which almost certainly concerns Rowley Head and not Rowley in

Durham); Reg. Romeyn, no. 1273 (but cf. Reg. Zouche, ff. 291Ar, 296Av).

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

180

archbishops had no qualms about enlisting the crown’s aid in disciplining

their more recalcitrant tenants and neighbours.

But the liberty did, all the

same, remain largely self- governing. It did so because the claims of its ‘royal

rights’ were respected by the crown, the liberty’s inhabitants and wider local

society.

 e greatest landholders in the liberty were the archbishop of York and

Hexham Priory.  e archbishop’s holdings were worth some £200 to £300

p.a.; the value of the priory’s is unknown, but in 1379 its rental income

alone in Hexhamshire was about £50.

 e scale of their respective

holdings was one reason why the liberty did not support a substantial or

wealthy local elite; another was Hexhamshire’s geography. South of the

Tyne, the terrain soon rises to over 1,000 feet, and the southern reaches

of the liberty were dominated by great expanses of moorland, reaching

heights of 2,000 feet at the boundary with Durham.  e bulk of the liberty’s

major manors and townships – Beaufront, Beukley, Bing eld, Coastley,

Errington, Fallow eld and Langhope – were clustered west and north of

Hexham, and it was there that Hexhamshire’s more substantial freeholders

were to be found. It is not easy to assess the size or value of their holdings:

the only detailed information comes from fourteenth- century inquisitions

post mortem, whose reliability is open to question. Still, the  gures are sug-

gestive.  e manor with the greatest recorded peacetime value was Beukley,

at £13.6s.8d. p.a.; other estates seem to have been worth much less, even

allowing for under- valuation.  us Beaufront was valued at £3.6s.8d. p.a. in

1323; Coastley was worth £5 in 1350, when Langhope with Hackford was

scarcely worth the £4 rent by which it was held.

And while some of these

estates were described as manors, and Bing eld and Beaufront had courts,

no estate was particularly extensive. In 1307 Langhope contained 200 acres,

and the principal freehold estate in Bing eld consisted of 160 acres of land

and nine of meadow. Beaufront comprised 100 acres of land, meadow

and pasture; a moiety of Fallow eld seems to have consisted of two mes-

suages and forty- one acres.

Furthermore, the rights of the archbishops of

For example, CPR 1266–72, pp. 716–17; 1281–92, p. 143.

Archbishop: accounts give a net value of c. £300 in the early fourteenth century (SC

6/1144/1), and the liberty was extended at c. £270 in 1340 (C 145/140/7). The liberty’s

taxed value in 1322 was just over £240 (Reg. Melton, f. 498v), and in 1397 it was said to

be worth £200 (CIMisc., vi, no. 337). Priory: Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 1–12, summarised in

NCH, iii, pp. 148–50.

For these values, see Reg. Melton, f. 509r; Reg. Zouche, ff. 296v–296Ar. For the association

of Langhope and Hackford, cf. C 145/140/7, with ADM 75/150, Coastley, no. 2; 75/78/1.

NCS, ZSW/169/1 (c. 1250); CP 40/375, m. 138 (1353).

Reg. Greenfield, v, no. 2618; Reg. Melton, ff. 509r, 739r.

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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE

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York and of Hexham Priory circumscribed the lordship of several tenants.

Hexham Priory, for example, had by 1298 half the vill of Bing eld and £4

of rent there; in 1379 the priory’s manor in Bing eld contained 238 acres

of arable in demesne.  e lord of Coastley owed the prior £2.13s.4d. yearly

for multure and the right to have a mill.  e archbishops retained lands in

Errington and Fallow eld, and a mill in the former: in 1340, in fact, their

holdings in Errington were worth some £20 p.a.

Nor were the new estates created from the thirteenth century onwards of

great value to their tenants. By this period, few grants of land or wardships

were made at preferential terms. Hexham Priory paid £2.13s.4d. p.a. for

145½ acres in Anick and Dotland granted by Archbishop Gray; Langhope

was granted in the late thirteenth century for £4 p.a., and was worth little

more in 1350. Again, it seems unlikely that the waste land in Nubbock

that Archbishop Melton granted to  omas Lealholm could realise much

more than the £2.13s.4d. for which it was held.

In sum, the liberty had no

estates that could compare with some of the manors in adjoining parts of

Northumberland, such as Halton near Corbridge, worth some £20 when it

was extended in 1287, and Langley, valued at about £25 in 1308.

As a result, throughout our period the liberty contained only one knightly

family, Vaux of Beaufront; and few of its other principal freeholders had a

real claim to local weight or gentle status. In the  rst half of the thirteenth

century, admittedly, the Bertrams were signi cant  gures, holding Beukley

in addition to estates in Bing eld, Cocklaw and Langhope, as well as in Great

Whittington outside the liberty. But that family’s eminence ended with

Adam II Bertram, who sold Beukley and Langhope to Archbishop Gray in

about 1250.

Other thirteenth- century freeholding families, named a er

their estates of Bing eld and Errington, were essentially local  gures, mostly

occurring at the tail- end of witness- lists alongside other minor families like

the Wakelins of Hallington.

And fundamentally the tenurial structure of

Hexhamshire did not change over our period. At the end of the fourteenth

century the liberty was still dominated by the Vaux family, di erent branches

of which held Beaufront and Beukley in addition to signi cant properties in

Fallow eld, Bing eld and Portgate.  e only manor- house of any signi -

cance was probably at Beaufront, where there was a ‘tower’ by 1415.

Other

Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 6–7, 12, 109; SC 6/1144/3; C 145/140/7.

Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 91–4; Reg. Zouche, ff. 296v–296Ar; CPR 1330–4, p. 489.

CDS, ii, no. 319; C 134/10/15.

H. H. E. Craster, ‘Some Bingfield deeds’, AA, 3rd ser., 21 (1924), p. 191; Reg. Gray, pp. 265,

284.

For example, Reg. Gray, pp. 284–5.

C. J. Bates, The Border Holds of Northumberland (London, 1891), p. 8.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

182

than members of that family, only John Coastley of Coastley and Langhope

(d. 1349) is known to have used armorial bearings in the fourteenth cen-

tury.

 e other prominent later fourteenth- century freeholders were the

Redshaws, who  rst appeared around 1330, when William Redshaw acquired

through marriage a claim to part of the manor of Errington. By 1340 he had

acquired Hallington, which was still in the family’s possession in the   eenth

century; his son John also seems to have had interests in Cocklaw.

How did these local families  t into the changing structures of power and

patronage in the liberty?  ese structures were shaped very largely by the

archbishops of York. Hexham Priory’s holdings may have been consider-

able; but it was of the archbishop that most of the liberty’s families held

the majority of their lands, and the archbishop, with his control of o ce

and patronage, was throughout our period the dominant in uence on the

land- market and on the shape of local society. Hexham Priory’s own juris-

dictional rights were minor: it was agreed early in the thirteenth century

that when crown pleas were held in the liberty, the priory’s tenants would

be tried separately, and the priory would receive the amercements; but the

archbishop’s justices were still to preside.

For the most part, in fact, the

priory lent its spiritual and temporal power to supporting the lordship of

the archbishops. From an early date, it is likely that successive priors had

an important, even if largely informal, role in the government of the liberty.

 e earlier thirteenth- century priors – William (c. 1209–26), Bernard

(c. 1226–50), and John Lazenby (c. 1250–69) – were usually prominent

attestors to Archbishop Gray’s Hexhamshire charters.  us when Adam

Elrington swore to observe an agreement concerning common lands with

the archbishop, the prior of Hexham was the  rst named witness; most of

the others were Gray’s household knights and clerks.

In 1303 the prior

of Hexham was one of the men expected to lend his weight to a commis-

sion of array in the liberty; in 1320 he held one of the three keys to the chest

C. H. H. Blair, ‘Seals of Northumberland and Durham’, AA, 3rd ser., 20 (1923), no. 170. It

must be noted that few local seals survive from our period; but for non- armorial Errington

seals, see ibid., no. 264, and probably NCS, ZBL/23/1/2; for Bingfield, NCS, ZSW/169/1.

The Erringtons apparently became armorial in the early fifteenth century when John

Errington (d. 1434) acquired by marriage the principal Vaux estates inside and outside the

liberty. The family’s arms first appear in Thomas Jenyn’s book of c. 1410: C. H. H. Blair,

‘The armorials of Northumberland: an index and ordinary to 1666’, AA, 3rd ser., 6 (1910),

p. 186, with C 139/70/30; E 149/155/10; SC 6/1123/12, m. 4.

C 145/140/7; Reg. Zouche, f. 297v; SC 6/1123/12, m. 4; JUST 1/661, m. 4d. William also

held land outside the liberty in Haydon: JUST 1/1464, m. 22.

Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 92–3, 101.

Reg. Gray, pp. 147, 227–8, 275, 281–8, 290–1.

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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE

183

where the liberty’s issues were stored.

Moreover, in the fourteenth century,

when the liberty’s administration comes into clearer focus, there is no mis-

taking the prominent role of priors and canons, especially in the  nancial

sphere. Robert Harum (receiver of the liberty 1310–13), Ralph Empingham

(receiver 1313–14) and  omas Appleton (receiver and keeper of the spir-

ituality of Hexhamshire in 1313 and 1323–4) were all canons of the priory;

in 1357 Prior John Walworth was appointed receiver of the liberty and

keeper of the spirituality. Another prior, Alexander Marton, was chancel-

lor of the liberty from 1376 until his resignation at the end of the century.

For most of the time the priory was a signi cant buttress to archiepiscopal

authority in the liberty.

It was successive archbishops, then, who primarily drew the map of

power in the liberty. We must, of course, remember that from their stand-

point Hexhamshire was an outlying part of a complex of ecclesiastical

estates centred on Yorkshire, comparable in some ways to their holdings

in Gloucestershire.  us the archbishop’s o cers in the liberty might

draw their wages from the principal steward of his estates or his household

steward, and – perhaps even a er Hexhamshire had acquired its own chan-

cellor in the later fourteenth century – writs for the liberty’s courts had to

be obtained from the archiepiscopal chancery.

Again, it might be at the

archbishop’s manors of Bishopthorpe or Cawood, both near York, that the

tenants of the liberty did their homage and fealty.

 e archbishops were all, to some extent, absentee lords; but some were

more absent than others, and the attention they gave to the liberty varied

considerably. Admittedly the nature of their in uence is not always easy to

evaluate.  e charter material that survives for the  rst half of the thirteenth

century is not matched in later periods. Nor do other sources give much

sense of whether local men were to be found in the archbishops’ households

or retinues; and so there is a danger of underestimating or misjudging the

personal lordship of later archbishops. Nonetheless it is likely that the dis-

tribution of evidence re ects at least in part the fact that later archbishops

were far less active than Walter Gray (1215–55) in Hexhamshire, and the

Hexham Priory, i, Preface, pp. lxxxvii–viii; Reg. Melton, f. 486v.

Harum: Reg. Greenfield, i, nos. 512, 537; iv, nos. 2314, 2330, 2341, 2349; v, no. 2412.

Empingham: ibid., i, no. 595; v, nos. 2442, 2560. Appleton: ibid., i, no. 592; Reg. Melton, f.

503v. Walworth: Reg. Thoresby, ff. 301v–2r. Marton: Reg. Neville, f. 101v; Hexham Priory,

i, Preface, pp. clxviii–xx.

Reg. Wickwane, nos. 781, 798; Reg. Greenfield, i, nos. 445, 477; Reg. Melton, ff. 486r,

512A–B, 514, etc. Note that when the chancellor presided over an inquisition post mortem

in 1393, the writ was still issued by the archbishop of York: ADM 75/150, Coastley,

no. 7.

Reg. Melton, f. 739r.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

184

contrasts between Gray and some of his later successors are probably real

enough.

Gray was undoubtedly a powerful presence in the liberty, as he seems

to have been elsewhere in his diocese.

Attestations to his charters suggest

that he was present in Hexhamshire more o en than were many of his suc-

cessors, and he was vigorous in the de nition and assertion of his church’s

wider rights in the liberty. He made important agreements with Hexham

Priory; and, following a violation of the liberty by Richard Umfraville,

Gray obtained as compensation the vill of  ockrington. He was active

in the liberty’s land- market, negotiating exchanges with local landholders

and buying out impoverished tenants, such as Ranulf Catton and Adam

II Bertram, who sold to the archbishop Catton and Beukley respectively.

Finally Gray made full use of the resources of patronage the liberty o ered

him, notably waste land and wardships.

Several local families can be traced in the archbishop’s attendance.

Regular witnesses of his charters include Adam I and Adam II Bertram,

Adam and Roger Bing eld, Ralph and Robert Errington, and Peter Vaux

from within the liberty, and Richard Fossor of  ockrington, John Halton,

Adam Tyndale of Langley and Matthew Whit eld from around it.

 ey

represented most of the major tenants of Hexhamshire and many of the

more important men of its neighbourhood.  us Peter Vaux was probably

the most prominent tenant of the liberty in the early thirteenth century.

He was also a  gure of some note on the county stage, being appointed

escheator for Northumberland in 1248, and holding a life- interest in

signi cant estates outside Hexhamshire, at Aydon, Little Whittington,

and ‘Burnton’ in Corbridge.

 ese estates may well have been more

valuable than his holdings in the liberty. Nevertheless Hexhamshire does

seem to have been the focus of his interests, and Archbishop Gray his

most important lord. He was one of Gray’s knights, with an apparently

signi cant (if informal) role in the government of the liberty; and for his

services he received a generous share of the patronage Gray dispensed

in Hexhamshire, most notably a farm of its mines, and – quite probably

The fullest treatment remains W. H. Dixon and J. Raine, Fasti Eboracenses (London,

1863), pp. 279–95, especially pp. 290–2, for his diocesan activities.

Reg. Gray, pp. 146–8 (Thockrington); 227–8, 242, 255, 285–6 (exchanges); 281–2, 284–5

(Catton and Beukley); 221–3, 229, 242, 249 (waste); 234–5, 237 (wardships). The ‘H.

Walln.’ to whom Gray granted the wardship of Roger Bingfield (ibid., p. 234) remains

unidentified.

To the enrolled charters printed in Reg. Gray, passim, should be added Shakespeare

Birthplace Trust, DR10/43, which provides the witnesses to the charter for William

Widindon (Reg. Gray, p. 223).

CR 1247–51, p. 36; NCH, x, pp. 337–8.

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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE

185

– the vill of Beukley.

Indeed, Gray’s episcopate may have seen the liberty

become a focus for local society in the Tyne valley to an extent that was

rarely if ever seen later.  e baili of Hexhamshire, a relatively minor

 gure in other respects, might be called on to witness deeds outside the

liberty; in one, concerning Langley, the principal witnesses were the prior

of Hexham, Peter Vaux and the baili .

Richard son of Alexander, a

baili of the barony of Langley whose principal interests were in Langley

and Allerwash, was drawn into Gray’s service as the liberty’s baili and

granted land in Allerwash to Hexham Priory.

Gray’s successors, it would appear, managed the liberty rather di er-

ently. Some took a close interest in Hexhamshire and its resources.

But,

allowing for the changes in the nature of the evidence, it does seem that

from at least the later thirteenth century the archbishops were not a focus

for the ambitions of local society as Gray had been, and their households

were no longer places where local men might seek service. O ce and

patronage in the liberty were increasingly given to the archbishops’ fol-

lowers and kinsmen. Such contrasts, it is true, should not be exaggerated,

since Archbishop Gray himself had used his familiars to govern the liberty.

Geo rey Buckland, a justice in about 1227, was one of the archbishop’s

household clerks, and a canon successively of Ripon and Beverley.

William Widindon, his fellow justice, was Gray’s attorney and steward:

a Nottinghamshire knight with interests around Southwell, he received

signi cant archiepiscopal patronage in that area and elsewhere.

Despite

such appointments, however, and despite the appointments of other baili s

who probably originated outside the liberty,

there had remained ample

openings and rewards for men like Peter Vaux. Under later archbishops, in

contrast, opportunities were much scanter, as o ce and patronage became

dominated by men from outside Hexhamshire.

Reg. Gray, pp. 221–2, 224, 237, 284, 287–8. No grant concerning Beukley survives; it was

purchased by Gray around 1250, and occurs among John II Vaux’s estates in 1323: ibid.,

p. 284; Reg. Melton, f. 509.

ADM 75/81/2, Dilston, no. 3; HN, II, iii, p. 366.

Lucy Cart., no. 182; BF, ii, p. 1130; Reg. Gray, p. 288; Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 98, 110; cf.

CPL, i, p. 278.

Reg. Greenfield, i, no. 390; Reg. Melton, f. 481v.

Beverley Minster Fasti, ed. R. T. W. McDermid (YASRS, 1993), p. 16; for his dates as

justice, see above, p. 175, n. 7.

Reg. Gray, pp. 223, 226–8, 245, 249, 255, 257, 268, 286; Feet of Fines for the County of York

from 1232 to 1246, ed. J. Parker (YASRS, 1925), pp. 9–137, passim; Feet of Fines for the County

of York from 1246 to 1272, ed. J. Parker (YASRS, 1932), p. 79; CPR 1232–47, p. 288; Visitations

and Memorials of Southwell Minster, ed. A. F. Leach (Camden Society, 1891), p. 180.

These other bailiffs probably included William Doncaster and John Elmham: NCS,

ZSW/169/1; Reg. Gray, p. 285.

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